Monday, March 22, 2010

He did not start out with exposure to the written word, although unlikemost Roma his father, a Kalderash Rom from Russia taught him how toread, write and count. What he did bring to literature was a longtradition of poetry and storytelling. His ancestors created poems forspecial occasions, poems to be recited at funerals and left behind liketheir history, without leaving a written trace. At the fall of nightnomadic Roma used to sit around roaring fires, letting their minds roamfree, creating wild stories of adventure and creatures only the mind cansee.

He told me, for I was fortunate to be his friend toward the end of hislife, he started to write in prison, where he landed because of a familyfeud. He translated that feud into his first novel, the Ursitory, thenovel that led me to Mateo. I was struck at once by the musicality ofhis writing, although he wrote in French, not Romani. Yet even in alanguage not his own, the sounds of his words were a major dimension ofthe text. At the time I was studying Joyce and Chaucer, both giants ofthe rhythm and sounds of their words enveloping their text. Bycomparison Maximoff was a child of nature, an enchanting, seductiveartist drawing you into a world of natural magic. And like most truewriters, writing was the truest, richest form of living for him, to thevery end. I was supposed to meet him once again in Paris, but he wasalready in a hospital for the last time. The year was 1999. There was noway for us to communicate. No cell phones to reach each other. As aresult I did not see him while his life was fading, instead his image,his husky Roma voice remained alive for me, as alive as the survivingsounds and visions of his writings.

Friday, March 12, 2010

I grew up in an era of mass murder. Hitler not only targeted Jews andGypsies. He targeted Poles, homosexuals, the insane, politicaldissidents. Millions died in the countries he invaded. I understand 25million Russians alone died in World War II. Hitler was of course farfrom the only one using power for mass murder. Stalin and Mao Zedongmore than held their own in this era of horror and inhumanity.

It would take years for me to learn the full extent of the war. All Igrew up knowing was that any stranger was presumed an enemy. When indoubt, kill. War on a planning board and war on the ground are twounrelated realities. War on the ground has no logic; humanity isreplaced by killer instinct.

On the other side of that brutality was the need to trust. We trustedour own. We trusted those we knew were persecuted like ourselves, thosewho like us were on the run. Among them were Roma, then known only asGypsies. They were different from us, in dress, in custom, in language.I don't remember animosity between us. Once back in Cologne, where I wasborn, it was with a group of Gypsy kids that I "procured" potatoes andbriquettes for heating off railway cars in the dark. I knew we weredifferent, what brought us together was a humanity that was strongerthan the differences. Many of us had shared similar fates.

After the war I lost track of Roma. I lived in a world removed fromtheirs, until 1995, when I picked up a pen and started to relive thepast. Once again, I connected with Roma as much as I could. I tried tofind out how Roma were faring in the after-war. In France I asked myfriend Mateo Maximoff, the Kalderash writer, how Gypsies were doing inFrance. He told me they were doing alright, there was no trouble. Allthe people from his clan had jobs in factories and hospitals repairingpots, etc. In Italy I was told, Gypsies had resumed their lives frombefore the war. They traveled the shores of the Mediterranean and theAdriatic selling trinkets in the summer, doing itinerant farm workwhenever possible.

Then attitudes began to change. I witnessed the first open hostilitytoward Roma in Paris, when a furious bell hop in front of a fancy Parishotel chased away a young Gypsy woman with a baby clutched to her chest.Nobody seemed to care. The woman was alone with her baby, she lookedhomeless. I later figured out she must have been a refugee. The Yugoslavwar, where Roma had been used as human shields, had come to an end. Romastarted to flood Western Europe in search of hope, only to crash into agrowing wall of hate.

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

[Roma Daily News] The first stone of Romasia, the land of Roma dream,has been laid.

….."the idea was to purchase farmland, or to renovate derelict andabandoned farmhouses where we could create working communities (manyhave compared these Romasia farms to the Israeli kibbutz). The workingcommunities would consist of Roma families with a certain kinship,people with skill in construction, agriculture, cattle-breeding – skillsthat exist in practically every Roma nucleus, and are often carried outto a high level of specialization and expertise."

I have lived on a Kibbutz in Israel in the early 60's. It was thepurest form of communism, in the good the sense, that I have ever comeacross. The problem is that this form of isolationism cannot sustainitself without solid bridges to the world that surrounds it. In thisincreasingly complex world everything has to boil down to a give andtake. We all have to fit into and share this modern community of man,otherwise instead of creating a separate community/country we create azone of war. I believe in diversity of cultures, I also believe thatwithout building bridges of peace and cooperation they will be endangered.

Meanwhile….. "the dream of building Romasia has gone ahead – but withthe help of private funds. The project is underway in Arad (Romania)while the first plot of land has already been purchased in Costata(again Romania)….."

Something positive has to happen to offer Europe's Roma a life worthliving. I do hope and wish this could be that solution, and it could,with all sides willing to compromise.